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My Conversation with Dr. Paul Ferris

Last year, Dr. Paul Ferris from Bethel Seminary taught a course for Mobile Ed. Again, I was not the one with him in studio making the course, but had the pleasure of interviewing him for our podcast.

He was here the same week as Dr. Jon Paulien. Two of my Instructional Designer colleagues were in studio and I was working on preproduction for future courses. They joined us for a week in Mobile Ed shortly after I started here in June of 2014.

Dr. Ferris is a magnificent grandfatherly sort of man. He had an incredible presence on camera. We usually, and understandably, spend a lot of time getting professors comfortable with a studio environment that is quite different from their classroom setting. Dr. Ferris took to it very easily, and was quite comfortable. Furthermore, he is a great Old Testament and Hebrew scholar, and delivered a great course for us on a Survey of the Major Prophets.

I was still getting used to our podcast context doing these first two interviews. I wanted to get personal if I could, and Dr. Ferris was willing to go there. He talked about church planting, and the hardships of ministry and his passion for teaching. I also started asking a question I ask all my speakers, sometimes on the record sometimes off, regarding trends they see in their students over the years. Ferris’ response has mirrored what I’ve learned from many others. Most profs I talk to see an increase in Biblical skepticism and a decrease in Biblical literacy, from their perspective. There have been a few interesting exceptions which I’ll discuss in posts to come.